The Grass Roots Revolution

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Michael Olson Grassroots assessment Everybody’s a critic. Nobody can go through life without being examined. In fact I have often heard that the unexamined life is not worth living. Now whether this means we should examine each other or ourselves I do not know. But by examining Malcolm X’s speech, “Message to Grassroots” I hope to understand him better through his use and missuses of Logos, Pathos, and Egos. To begin with Logos, Pathos, and Egos are all types of rhetorical appeals. Logos entails rational argument. Pathos generally refers to the appeal to the emotion. Ethos on the other hand refers to an appeal to authority or character; this is the idea that a fact is given more credence when associated with a certain person. In “Message to Grassroots” Malcolm predominately uses Pathos to support his rise for action in the black community. He uses Ethos to garner hatred in the people he’s speaking to, and then he points them toward the government. You can see this in the first paragraph, “… you represent a person who poses a serious problem for America because you are not wanted” (Malcolm 1). He then gives them a person to hate, the white man, “We have this in common: We have a common oppressor, a common exploiter, and a common discriminator…. And what we have foremost in common is that enemy, the white man” (Malcolm 1). Then he calls for action, he speaks on past revolutions and how they have been fought, “Look at the American Revolution in 1776. That revolution was for what? For land. Why did they want land? Independence. How was it carried out? Bloodshed. … You haven’t got a revolution that doesn’t involve bloodshed. And you’re afraid to bleed” (Malcolm 3). Malcolm repeats the last two stages, telling them who to hate, and then a call to arms, throughout the rest of the speech. With this in mind, Malcolm does not use only Pathos. While Pathos is
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